


uplift the soul to realms above

by procellous



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Autistic Marcus "Dizzee" Kipling, Gen, M/M, Marcus "Dizzee" Kipling-centric, Polish Thor, Recreational Drug Use, Synesthete Marcus "Dizzee" Kipling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 07:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11009046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procellous/pseuds/procellous
Summary: Somehow, the idle conversation between the Get Down Brothers turns to soulmarks. The smoke from the joints they’re passing around is colored with their voices, reds and blues, sunset orange and deep indigo.Zeke, of course, shows off the loopy cursiveMylene Cruzon his arm, grinning. The others show theirs, girls' names in dark letters against dark skin. Shao reveals that he doesn’t have one—that way he can love all the ladies, he laughs. Dizzee can see the lie in his eyes, but he's not sure any of the others see it.“What about you, Dizz?” Shao asks, and Dizzee freezes.“What about me?”“What’s your mark say?”





	uplift the soul to realms above

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Magpied_Spider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/gifts).



> You can blame Mags for this, because she's the one who suggested that Thor was Polish and had a long Polish name. 
> 
> Title is from Rumi:
> 
> _Oh, music is the meat of all who love,_  
>  _Music uplifts the soul to realms above._  
>  _The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:_  
>  _We listen and are fed with joy and peace._

Dizzee keeps his soulmark wrapped up. Other people wear theirs proudly, showing off the writing to anyone who asks, looking for their other half, but Dizzee keeps his hidden away under a leather cuff. When he meets them, he meets them, and he’s not going to go looking. A name on his wrist doesn’t mean anything, anyway. Doesn’t mean they’ll be happy together, doesn’t mean they’ll be _together_ , period.  
  
Besides, he gets tired of the jokes about it. It feels weird, to have people looking at the soulmark and laughing about how many z’s and y’s there are. He feels protective of it, somehow, even if he doesn’t know how to pronounce it either.  
  
He wonders if his soulmate is an alien. Maybe an alien would understand him in a way that humans didn’t.  
  
It’s written like a tag on a wall, and he’s pretty sure that whoever his soulmate is, they have his name in the same stylized letters that he paints walls with. It was his excuse for going out, when he was younger, pleading that he had to find his soulmate. Eventually, that excuse wore thin, so he stopped using it. He still looks for him in the lines on the walls, even though nobody tags with their real name.  
  
He looks for him, but he still doesn’t know if he wants to find them.  
  
He traces the lines on his arm, knowing exactly where they are without even looking, and plans his next piece.  
  
-  
  
Somehow, the idle conversation between the Get Down Brothers turns to soulmarks. The smoke from the joints they’re passing around is colored with their voices, reds and blues, sunset orange and deep indigo.  
  
Zeke, of course, shows off the loopy cursive _Mylene Cruz_ on his arm, grinning. The others show theirs, girls’ names in dark letters against dark skin. Shao reveals that he doesn’t have one—that way he can love all the ladies, he laughs. Dizzee can see the lie in his eyes, but he's not sure any of the others see it.  
  
“What about you, Dizz?” Shao asks, and Dizzee freezes.  
  
“What about me?”  
  
“What’s your mark say?”  
  
“My mark speaks of galaxies and eternities,” he says, enigmatically.  
  
Shao rolls his eyes. “C’mon, no it doesn’t, show us!”  
  
“Dizz’s mark is weird, man,” Ra Ra says. “It’s all consonants. No one can figure out how to say it, even Dizz!”  
  
Shao snorts. “Can’t be that bad.”  
  
“I swear, Dizzee’s soulmate is related to Mister _Mxyzptlk_ ,” Ra Ra insists.  
  
“Thanks, Ra,” Dizzee says dryly. His fingers twitch against his jeans. He wants to show them, suddenly, wants to wear the name proudly. How can you be a rebel if you don’t rebel? But like Rumi’s top hat, he knows that it won’t change anything. He’ll still be weird, still be an alien, but now with a weird, unpronounceable name on his wrist.  
  
He wants to be proud of it. Maybe, maybe if he finds him, he’ll uncover the name and say _yes_ , say _this is him, this is my soulmate._  
  
Maybe.  
  
-  
  
He likes kissing Thor, but more than that, he likes being around Thor, likes touching Thor and having Thor touching him. Thor kisses like his art looks, and there’s something electric that runs across his lips, arcing and crackling inside Dizzee.  
  
He feels more alive when he’s with Thor, like he’s stretching a muscle he hasn’t moved in a while, like the feeling of a cracking knuckle, like the click of the buttons on his jacket.  
  
Thor’s lips find their way down to Dizzee’s neck, to his chest, and Dizzee opens himself up, takes in his lips and teeth and the heady feeling of Thor on top of him, his solid weight resting on his legs, on his chest, his teeth grazing along the pulse point in his neck and Dizzee’s hands find their way to his hips, keeping him close, pulling him closer.  
  
Every cell in Dizzee’s body hums with energy, like there are fireworks under his tongue and in his chest, like if he opens his mouth a star will emerge.  
  
“You’re amazing,” Thor whispers, hands trailing down his chest. His voice coils around them like smoke, green as Rumi with traces of gold. Dizzee wants to paint him, wants everyone to see how pretty Thor’s voice is, wants to throw it up on a wall and tell the world here, look.  
  
Dizzee turns his head, hands tangled in Thor’s hair, and kisses him, swallowing the not-really-there smoke as though he can keep Thor inside him.  
  
There’s paint streaked across their faces and bodies, flecks caught in their hair, and Dizzee smears some of the paint on Thor’s arm into a handprint.  
  
-  
  
Dizzee’s pretty sure that his skin is melting off. He’s kicked off the comforter and is only covered in a sheet, but he’s still too hot. It feels like summer is in full force but only for him. There’s snow outside his window, and it’s tempting to roll around in it. The thought of moving is exhausting.  
  
“Wake up, loser,” Yolanda says, rapping against the wood impatiently. Her yellow voice is leaking through the edges of the door. A minute later she groans and knocks again, louder. “Wake up, I said.”  
  
Dizzee stares at his ceiling. He should paint it, but what? Maybe the green of Thor’s voice. He can almost picture it, the green curling around his room, filling it.  
  
“If you’ve snuck out again Mom’s going to kill you!”  
  
Answering Yolanda takes conscious effort. “I’m awake,” he says. His throat burns, and his voice is a rasp.  
  
“You had better be!” Yolanda’s footsteps fade away, and he can hear her yelling at Ra Ra to get out of bed.  
  
Dizzee tries to melt into a puddle and drip away, but he stays distressingly solid. He can feel himself spiraling with the planet beneath him.  
  
Time slips away from his fingers, but Mom comes in. She takes one look at him, sweating and sticking to the sheets, eyes glazed with fever, and puts a hand on his forehead.  
  
She says something, but his eyes slip closed and he floats away without hearing her.  
  
-  
  
He wakes up again, and it’s as dark out as the city ever gets. There’s snow falling outside, gleaming white. The falling flakes look almost like stars.  
  
He’s slept all day. He has vague memories of waking up, of Mom giving him warm broth, but he can’t say when they happened. He wonders if Zeke and Shao know, if his brothers told them that he was sick. He wonders if Thor knows, if anyone thought to tell him.  
  
As though conjured from his thoughts, Thor raps on his window. Snow sticks to his hair and eyelashes. Dizzee unlocks the window and pushes it open, except that partway up it sticks and his arms feel like spaghetti. He sways on his feet, the room spinning around him. Thor hooks a hand underneath and pushes it up the rest of the way, sliding inside.  
  
Dizzee doesn’t fall so much as the world abruptly tilts, and Thor’s strong arms are around him, supporting him. His cheek is pressed against Thor’s shoulder, his bare chest against Thor’s shirt. He hopes Thor doesn’t mind how sticky he is, because he is very, very sticky.  
  
“Jeez,” Thor says, “They said you were sick, but I didn’t think you were that bad.” His voice curls around Dizzee, dark green and soft. “You’re burning up.”  
  
“Your voice is pretty,” he tells him. “It’s all soft looking.” He reaches out with one hand and traces the smoke. Some part of his fever-wracked brain remembers that he shouldn’t talk about seeing sounds. It gets ignored.  
  
“Really?” Thor says, walking him over to the bed.  
  
“Mmm. It’s green, you know. Green like Rumi. ’s nice.” He lets Thor move him, feeling stretched thin and pliant. He’s too tired to feel much else.  
  
“Yeah?” Thor has him back in bed, covers drawn around his chest. He sits on the sheet, watching Dizzee.  
  
“Yeah. Talk to me?”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“Anything. I wanna see your voice.”  
  
Thor laughs, holding Dizzee’s hand, rubbing between the knuckles. “Alright,” he says, and starts rambling. Dizzee let the words wash over him, watching the green smoke twisting around the room.  
  
Somewhere between one breath and another, he falls asleep.  
  
-  
  
He wakes up again to find a thermos of soup sitting by his bed, and no Thor. He’s pretty sure he dreamed him up, anyway. (He’s pretty sure that he dreamed him up, _period_ —that he’ll wake up and Thor will be gone in a puff of smoke—but he doesn’t talk about that.)  
  
-  
  
Thor comes by the next night, sliding in through the window again. Dizzee has been drifting between sleeping and waking for a while, and if this is a dream, then that’s okay. Thor is a good dream. Unless, of course, this is the start of a nightmare. He’s had a lot of nightmares that start with Thor in his room.  
  
“Hey there, handsome,” Thor says.  
  
Dizzee is pretty sure he isn’t very handsome right now, with his sheets sticking to him and the fever burning him up from inside. The cuff on his left wrist is glued to his skin with sweat. Thor seems convinced, though.  
“Hey,” he croaks out, and coughs until it feels like there’s a lung in his throat. “Ow.”  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Been better.” He is distressingly solid right now, trapped inside bone and skin when he wants to turn into a liquid and drip, drip, drip down into a puddle.  
  
“You should get some rest,” Thor says, smiling. “I’ll keep you safe.”  
  
“Stay with me?”  
  
“I promise.” He strokes Dizzee’s cheek with one hand, humming softly. When he starts to sing, it’s in a language Dizzee doesn’t recognize.  
  
His eyes drift closed. When he opens them again, he’s not in his room anymore. He’s sitting with Thor in a field of flowers. Thor picks flowers and twists them into Dizzee’s afro, and Dizzee drops a flower crown on his head. Thor laughs and they kiss, teeth knocking together in their clumsy joy.  
  
-  
  
Dizzee’s recovered well enough to help out with chores the next morning. He’s sweeping the sidewalk, bundled up in more jackets than the crisp air really needs. He’s still generally sore, but breathing doesn’t hurt anymore and the simple, repetitive motion of sweeping is soothing.  
  
“Hey, you,” Thor says, bumping their shoulders together. Dizzee jumps at the sudden contact—he hadn’t even noticed Thor behind him.  
  
He spares a moment to wonder what Thor is doing here, another to appreciate the way the early morning sun lights up his blond hair, and a third to check for anyone who might see them together. His brothers are inside, teasing each other. Yolanda’s in the back room with Mom. Dad is still upstairs. Everyone is accounted for, and none of them are watching him.  
  
“Are you feeling better?” Thor asks, draping an arm around Dizzee’s shoulders—nothing more than a friend might do, no more intimate than a good friend checking on someone after they’ve been sick, but Dizzee’s heart is beating fast in his throat. Every darkened window seems like a watchful eye, every closed door a mouth, ready to tell the world about them.  
  
“Yeah.” He rubs his left wrist idly; the cuff chafed his arm, so he has to leave it off while it heals. He feels naked without it, even though the jackets cover his soulmark completely.  
  
“Hey, white boy from the club!” Ra Ra calls. Dizzee buries his face in his hands, groans.  
  
“Hey, Dizzee’s little brother!” Thor shouts back. “Come by later,” he tells Dizzee, softly.  
  
“I will. Did—uh, did you come by my room while I was sick? Or was that just a fever dream?”  
  
“If it was a dream, it was one I was having, too.”  
  
“You’re a good dream.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
If they were anybody else, Thor would have kissed him then, but they aren’t, and so Thor squeezes his arm and leaves. Dizzee watches him go and thinks _someday I’ll kiss you without looking over my shoulder first._  
  
-  
  
Paint makes everything else melt away until nothing exists but his soul butterflied on a wall, and it’s enough to make him forget about his soulmark as he takes off his jacket so it doesn’t get paint on it, because Ma _will_ kill him if he gets paint on another jacket.  
  
Thor notices it, though, because of course he does, and runs his fingers over the bones of his wrist.  
  
“Can I?” he says, fingers light as feathers.  
  
It takes Dizzee a long time to realize what he’s talking about, that he’s asking to see his soulmark.  
  
“Sure,” he says, voice calm but heart racing.  
  
Thor turns his wrist over to reveal _Tadeusz Młynarczyk_ , and sucks in a sharp breath.  
  
“If you’re gonna laugh,” Dizz says, but he’s not sure what’s going to follow that.  
  
“No, no, I wouldn’t. It’s just—a surprise, that’s all.” Thor’s eyes are wide, and he traces over the lines carefully, reverently, as though they’re made from glass.  
  
“You know him or something?”  
  
“Something like that.” Stray strands of hair fall out of his ponytail and frame his face. “Tadeusz Młynarczyk, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.” He says it Mih-nar-chik, and it’s like Dizzee’s been waiting to hear it for years.  
  
He kisses the name, and a shudder runs up Dizzee’s spine.  
  
“See,” Thor says, and there’s a laugh curling his mouth up into a smile as he says it, “He usually goes by Thor, these days.” His eyes flick up to Dizzee’s face.  
  
Dizzee’s heart stops still and his mind goes blank.  
  
“You?” he says.  
  
Thor raises his arm and reveals his wrist, where _Marcus Kipling_ is stunningly dark against his pale skin. There’s a question in his eyes.  
  
“That’s,” Dizzee says, mouth dry, “That’s my name.”  
  
“Good,” Thor says, and kisses him. The world melts away.  
  
-  
  
Dizzee stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, rubbing the most visible bruises. Most of them are covered up by his collar. The other three are high enough up that they aren’t—and one of them is on his throat, and comes with the memory of Thor’s face underneath his chin, teeth scraping against his Adam’s apple.  
  
_You should see the other guy,_ he thinks, and has to muffle the burst of laughter. The hickeys had shown up so well on Thor that he couldn’t resist painting him with vivid reds and purples.  
  
His eyes flick over to a scarf someone—probably Boo—left on the counter. He grabs it and wraps it around his neck.  
  
It covers up the marks, at least, although it does make him look like he’s wearing a scarf inside. He’ll take it, he decides. They already know he’s weird, a scarf isn’t any weirder.  
  
His cunning disguise doesn’t make it to the table, because his mother notices and demands he takes it off as soon as she sees him.  
  
“Bring her over for dinner on Sunday,” she says as she takes in the state of his neck.  
  
He blinks. “Who?”  
  
“The girl who left those marks on your neck,” she says. “Since I doubt they came from thin air?”  
  
Sunday. He can feel his pulse racing. What if—  
  
“Marcus, get your head out of the clouds!” He blinks and he’s standing in the kitchen. Ma looks like she’s had to say his name a few times.  
  
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ll bring her over,” he lies, because there isn’t a girl, and bringing Thor over—he’s not ashamed of loving Thor, but he’ll admit to being afraid.  
  
-  
  
His feet take him to the temple, staring at the overlapping colors of paint. They’re like tree rings, and if he could peel them back, layer by layer, color by color, he’d find names he doesn’t know, people who predate him. They bomb to leave their mark, but their marks get painted over, names forgotten, symbols untranslated. A permanent sort of transience.  
  
Shao’s there, lounging on a battered couch, smoking. He nods to Dizzee when he comes in, whistles lowly when he sees the marks on his neck.  
  
“Fun night?”  
  
“You should see the other guy,” Dizzee says, and Shao snorts.  
  
“Yeah, I bet.”  
  
“Anyway, I—“ His throat closes around the words. He forces them out anyway. “I’m bringing, uh, someone over to my parents’ house, for dinner, and…”  
  
Shao’s eyes widen in understanding. “Thor? That white boy?”  
  
Dizzee nods, the motion jerky, like his head is on a string and someone else is moving him. Up, down, up, down.  
  
“Shit, man. Yeah, I got your back, don’t worry.”  
  
-  
  
He wakes up Sunday morning with a nightmare pounding away between his temples: getting careless and being seen with Thor. Coming home to find fists waiting for him, in his face, in his stomach, blacking his eye and breaking his nose, finding himself out on the street with the door slammed in his face. An alien in a top hat, doomed to terrify everyone at the opera, no matter how fancy his suit is.  
  
He can’t confess it to anyone, because if he could then he wouldn’t be having the nightmare. Thor would understand, but he would also blame himself, and Dizzee can’t let that happen.  
  
He curls up with his knees to his chest, trying to catch his breath, and he’s seized with a sudden urge to go out. He doesn’t know where, but he needs to move, be outside. His room feels too tight, a cocoon. Time to become.  
  
The morning air is sweet in his lungs, for all that it’s filled with smoke.  
  
Thor is shirtless, the bruises Dizzee left on his neck, his shoulders, his chest turning green and yellow. He can’t resist kissing them, can’t resist the tiny moan that escapes from Thor’s mouth in a puff of smoke.  
  
“My parents want to meet you,” he says, “Tonight, for dinner.”  
  
Thor stiffens. “You serious?” His hand lingers on the small curve of Dizzee’s waist.  
  
He wants to curl up and hide, wants to avoid the situation—make up some excuse about being sick, being busy, whatever—but he can’t.  
  
Thor brings their mouths together, slow, easy, and Dizzee thinks _this is how Zeke feels all the time._  
  
“I’ll be with you the whole time,” Thor promises, and Dizzee knows it’s true.  
  
-  
  
Thor has his arm wrapped around Dizzee’s waist as they walk in. It’s comforting, grounding, like an anchor, keeping him from drifting away.  
  
Nobody mentions anything for the first fifteen minutes, and Dizzee’s heart is pounding, mind running through scenarios, each one worse than the last. Thor puts a hand on his knee. _I’m here,_ it says. _I’m with you_.  
  
“So,” Pa says, after a silence like an eternity, “What are your intentions toward my boy?”  
  
It’s so much like what he said when Yolanda first brought a boy over that Dizzee nearly gapes. Thor doesn’t seem fazed.  
  
“To love him.”  
  
Pa frowns. Dizzee can feel himself trembling. Thor runs his hand up his thigh, tangling their fingers together.  
  
“Thor,” Pa says slowly. “That what your momma calls you?”  
  
Thor looks like he’s been punched for a split second, the shock flickering across his face before disappearing. “My mom doesn’t call me much of anything anymore. But, uh, my legal name’s Tadeusz.”  
  
Dizzee squeezes his hand, runs his fingers along Thor’s arm where he knows _Marcus Kipling_ is written. _I’m here_ , he says without saying.  
  
“Ain’t that the name on your wrist, Dizz?” Yolanda says.  
  
“Tadeusz Młynarczyk,” Dizzee agrees. It feels almost as right in his mouth as Thor does, and he can see the small smile dancing around Thor’s mouth. “And he’s got mine.”  
  
Ra Ra drops his fork with a loud clatter. “Wait, you guys are _dating_?”  
  
“Uh,” Dizzee says. “Yes?”  
  
“You can do that?” Ra Ra looks like he never considered it as a possibility before. “This changes everything.”  
  
“Ronald,” Ma says, “Pick up your fork.”  
  
“Ma, I gotta go write something down.”  
  
“Finish your plate first.”  
  
“But _Ma_ —”  
  
“Finish your plate _first_ ,” she repeats.  
  
“Okay, okay.” He starts shoveling food into his mouth, fast enough that Dizzee wonders, for a moment, how he’s planning on breathing.  
  
“If you choke I’m gonna laugh,” Yolanda says.  
  
Ra Ra glares at her, mouth puffed out with food like a chipmunk. Dizzee snickers.

A minute later, when he starts coughing, Yolanda laughs so hard that she nearly falls out of her chair.

-  
  
Later that night, Dizzee catches Pa alone, without anyone to interrupt them or listen in.  
  
“So, you don’t have a problem with me dating Thor?” he asks, because he needs to be sure.  
  
“If I had a problem with that I’d have a problem with James and Ben. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”  
  
It takes a minute for Dizzee to figure out what he meant: two of his old jazz friends, who never married and lived together in an apartment.  
  
“Oh,” he says.  
  
“Really though, you couldn’t have found a nice Black boy? Or Puerto Rican? What about that Ezekiel kid you hang out with, he seems nice—”  
  
_“Pa.”_  
  
“C’mere.” Pa grabs him in a tight hug. “I love you, son.”  
  
“Love you too, Pa.”  
  
-  
  
Even later that night, when it’s just him and Thor, he breaks down into the tears he’s been holding back since Ma saw the hickeys.  
  
Thor holds him, strokes his back. He feels like a little kid, crying in his boyfriend’s arms, but when he finally runs out he feels better, lighter, like a weight’s been lifted off that he didn’t know he was carrying.  
  
“You okay?” Thor asks.  
  
“Yeah. I think I needed that.” He takes a deep breath, flops backwards onto his bed. “That was…that could have gone badly.”  
  
“Didn’t, though. Besides,” he kisses Dizz on the cheek, flopping down beside him, “You gotta not apologize for being an alien, right?”  
  
Dizzee laughs. “Yeah. Guess Rumi got to the opera, huh?”  
  
Thor traces tiny spirals on his stomach where his shirt rides up. “Was it everything he dreamed it would be?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shao doesn't have a soulmark because Annie burned it off his arm. (It would be platonic anyway—I stand by my aroace Shaolin.) If they had reason to ask Cadillac, he wouldn't have one either. 
> 
> Tadeusz Młynarczyk is pronounced tah-DE-oosh mih-NAR-chik.


End file.
